


Sacrifice

by illwynd



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Norse Bro Feels, Post-Thor: The Dark World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 19:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1910175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illwynd/pseuds/illwynd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki truly dies on Svartalfheim. Afterward, Thor tries to adjust to life without his brother. It turns out he can't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sacrifice

This time Loki dies truly.

Stabbed through by the dark elf’s blade, trembling, he babbles out apologies as Thor gathers him up. In every word, in every clutch of his hands, there is determination, desperation; Thor can feel that Loki is dying, and it is all happening too quickly. Neither of them want to let go. They don’t take their eyes off each other’s faces, not until Loki draws his final breath and his features fall slack. Thor still has his brother in his arms, and he yells in harsh refusal as Loki’s eyes close and the color drains from his face.

Loki dies. But Thor has little time to mourn. He becomes aware of Jane’s faint hovering presence at his shoulder, uncertain, and he does not let himself think too much as he gets to his feet and leads her away.

When it is all over, when Malekith is defeated and the peril of the realms is ended, Thor returns to Svartalfheim and collects his brother’s body, the cloth across his face stirred only by the winds.

*

The two who remain at least both have the grace to wait until that one last, lonely funeral is over. But then, of course, they must speak.

It goes less well than Thor had expected. He listens as his father lists his crimes, and he explains his actions solemnly in reply, but it does nothing to temper the Allfather’s displeasure.

“We had already lost enough, yet against my commands you risked more,” Odin says, his eye staring into the shadows. “Needlessly. For hope, rather than certainty.”

Thor does not attempt to divert the truth of this with the fact of the outcome. But in the end, Odin grudgingly admits that his one surviving son will remain his heir.

The silent weight of mourning falls between them, and Thor takes the chance to inform his father that he will return to Midgard, then, at least until he is called upon. Odin’s answering look is thin and weary, the loss of Frigga already telling upon him.

“Perhaps that is for the best.”

So Thor goes, back to the mortal world with its fleeting rush and its unfamiliarity and its small concerns.

He goes back to Jane. He renews his alliance with the Avengers. He lives day to day, and only rarely does grief strike him.

It happens more often when he journeys home, visiting Odin to be certain the realm’s king is well. The loss is clearer there. His mother’s echoes are in everything. His brother’s shadow is everywhere. Each time he and his father speak, Thor becomes terribly aware that the two of them are the only ones of their family still alive, a sense of absence wreathing them in unfilled silences and unvoiced words.

They are dead, gone, both his mother and his brother. But while he longs for them, he knows there is nothing else he can do but to live for their memories, to honor them with his life. He remembers Loki’s final words and he hopes that is what his brother would want.

*

Thor returns always to the mortal realm because it is simpler there. But the troubles of Midgard are not always petty, as Thor discovers when he finds himself fighting a Titan, fighting alongside the mortals in battles that are as much of cunning and wit as they are about strength and fortitude.

The danger is great and the fighting is hard, and sometimes as he fights Thor imagines he feels Loki near him.

If Loki were still alive, he would be there—fighting beside him, helping them as no one else could. Thor does not doubt that. He also does not doubt it was Loki who called Thanos’ attention to this realm, one way or another, but that hardly matters. The enemy, the villain, the sharp-eyed glaring beast with bloodied knife in hand or being dragged away in chains—that is not what Loki was. Not truly. That was not _all_ that Loki was.

A bright glimmer of grief fills Thor’s heart as each hammer blow falls. Loki had _not_ betrayed him when it mattered most. He had rushed to Thor’s aid, reckless. Fearless. The dark elf had turned to him, the blade through his chest, and still Loki had not moved. He had given up his life to save Thor’s.

Thor fights on, alone even as he stands with his allies. Eventually victory is theirs, but the losses are countless, and then everyone must grieve.

*

The mortal realm heals more quickly than Thor would have dreamed, and he watches its recovery in quiet fascination as the years pass.

There are more losses, though, and Midgard begins to remind him of a river, too fluid and ever-changing to retain a scar.

Thor begins to feel more and more apart from it.

Then one day he is on his way back to the house he once shared with Jane and he is stopped short by the sight of Volstagg and Hogun sitting on the porch. It is not unheard of for his friends to pay a social call, but something drops in the pit of Thor’s stomach when he sees them, and he need not wait to be told.

“Is he…” Thor begins, his throat growing tight.

Hogun shakes his head. “He is sleeping.”

Several visits prior, Odin had warned him that the next time would likely be the last.

Thor can shirk his duty no longer. He takes only a little while to prepare to return home, and most of it is spent on goodbyes.

The Avengers—the few who remain of his first allies here and those who have joined them over time—make him promise to come back now and then; they assure him that he will always be welcome among them. He spends some hours saying his farewells to the house as well and the memories it holds. At evening he treads the route he and Jane once habitually walked when she was in need of a break from a difficult problem, and he breathes the now-familiar scents of Midgardian air.

Then he calls to Heimdall.

*

Odin sleeps endlessly on, and Asgard is Thor’s. The throne is his, and he has grown enough that he is glad he is ruling over a time of peace.

The people likewise seem glad. He can feel the contentment, the simple happiness that swells in the golden air. To have a young king, and one who has become so temperate—it is a rejuvenation. Thor can feel their happiness, though it is distant when it resonates in his own heart.

He realizes it is loneliness that troubles him, and he reminds himself that he is not alone. He has many friends, many who are dear to him. It is not even true to say that he has no remaining kin alive and wakeful; there are cousins, children of Odin’s brothers, and a few more distant relatives on his mother’s side. Some of them he feels he barely knows, and he sets about correcting that among all his other duties.

Some of his cousins are nearly his own age. Others are quite a bit younger. One of them Thor takes to very well, though the reasons for it elude him until it strikes him that this son of Vili has a wry laugh that feels almost familiar, matched by a tendency to a sort of thoughtful quiet that is unusual among young Asgardians.

Thor dreams of his brother that night, vividly. A mischievous presence beside him, quick eyes and smiling mouth. He dreams of the past, and of a sort of happiness that his waking mind has forgotten.

*

The realm has a young king and it is enjoying a time of peace. But if there is one thing Thor’s life has taught him, it is that nothing is certain.

The sensible thing to do now would be to make plans for the future. And among those plans must certainly be a successor to his own rule, whether that be needed soon or not for millennia. And there is, of course, one obvious choice for a partner in that endeavor.

Sif has been Thor’s friend for as long as he can remember, and he does love her. He knows, likewise, that she has feelings for him. She embraced him just as warmly on his return as she had when he left for Midgard years ago—they both know that in such long lives, one can have many loves.

He should ask her. He knows that.

He goes so far as to invite her out for a long ride through the fields and forests one day, renewing their friendship. And the whole time he tries to envision the future they might have. They would rule together, as companions. They would have children. The steady flow of time would carry them onward, far away from the troubles they have left behind.

He does not ask her that day. And that night, he is too unsettled by the visions he called to his mind to find any rest.

When morning comes, though, there is a gentle breeze blowing through his window; in it he can scent the sun on the blooms in Frigga’s gardens, the dewy grass, the dark loam.

*

His preparations take longer than he would like, but that is unavoidable.

He must make certain that the realm will be secure without him, though he doesn’t expect he will be gone more than a few months. He appoints a regent—a certain son of Vili—and he makes a number of other necessary arrangements.

Then he finds his old traveling cloak, one he has not worn since the last time he set foot on Svartalfheim, and he leaves.

There are several ways to go to Valhalla. The first, and the most famous, is to fall gloriously in battle. The second, lesser-known way is to perish in childbirth, dying for the chance that life will go on. Both of these ways lead to the reaching hand of a Valkyrie, speeding swift across the sky to reach the golden hall.

The final way is the rarest, a single route for the living, nearly forgotten. The journey difficult and dangerous. But such a thing has never stopped Thor in the past, and it will not stop him now.

It _does not_ stop him now.

The first person he meets as he ventures through the tall, arching gateway is her.

*

Thor weeps with his mother’s arms around him, weeps for happiness and relief as they speak over each other. He pulls back and touches her hair, tries to see her clearly through the blurring of his sight. She is lovelier than he remembered, and the thought brings on a fresh wash of tears. She laughs as he sweeps her up in his embrace.

He’s happy for the first time in years, yet he hears himself apologizing. He failed to save her. And he had been the one to put her in harm’s way. If he had not brought Jane to Asgard…

She shushes him. “You know better than that. And I would have been a very poor mother to you had I not done as I promised and watched over the one you loved.”

He wants to insist that he loved _her,_ his mother, even more… but in this place, he can’t. There is no regret in Frigga’s voice or in her eyes, only pride. And tenderness. He can’t dishonor her sacrifice with ingratitude.

He embraces her again until the tears stop.

When they do, and when he finds his voice, he tells her that he has come to bring her back.

She smiles and refuses.

“Even if I could, I would be returning to a life that is already gone. Your father is asleep and will remain so until the final battle; being _here_ is as close as I can come to being with him, now.”

Thor frowns. His mother tucks a lock of hair behind his ear, fondly.

“And your grief for me may be less now that we have had a chance for a proper goodbye.”

He swallows and looks away, and he becomes aware of the vastness of the hall in which they stand, the roof of gilded shields above, the din of endless merriment all around.

“Will you help me find my brother, then?” he asks.

*

She tells him, gently, that Loki is not there.

“Is he at Folkvangr?” Thor asks in confusion, but when Frigga sighs he knows the answer is no.

All of a sudden, Thor’s heart is pounding, alight with anxious pain of a sort he had almost forgotten. Loki died honorably, a warrior’s death. He died to save Thor. Thor held his brother in his arms as his heart stopped beating, he held him as the ash of that ruined world swirled into a dry storm around them.

How could that not have been good enough to earn him a place here?

Helheim, Frigga tells him, and Thor’s eyes sting. Neither honored nor dishonored. Merely one of the multitudes. She doesn’t know why, she says.

Thor stays only a brief time after that. There are many others he would surely be glad to see, but the delay in this place would not be safe for him.

And he isn’t sure he could bear it, when he has another journey ahead of him.

*

The road to Valhalla was hard. The road to Hel is harder.

By the time he arrives, he is exhausted in every fiber of his being. He is bruised, aching; the soles of his boots are worn down enough that he can feel every crack and every stone. He has passed through water and fire, over hill and vale.

And when he finally comes to the gates, he finds them shut.

He pounds on them with his fist and yells, demanding entrance. He makes use of his title, for surely a king has some prerogative.

There is a small noise behind him, and he turns to find Hela watching him, her skin pale as death, her headdress casting strange shadows across her face.

“Your status will not buy you entrance here, or have you not heard at what time kings and peasants become equal?” she says, with an unpleasant smile.

It is enough, though, to grant him audience with her. It is enough to get her to reply when he asks if Loki is indeed within her realm. Her answer is a nod.

“May I see him?” Thor pleads.

In the place they are in, the light is like dusk, just bright enough to see but not enough to see clearly. As Hela spreads her hands, the space between them glows. And for just a moment, there is Loki. A tiny image in unearthly light.

Thor isn’t sure what shocks him the most. In Valhalla, the people who crammed the massive hall were cheerful, hale, dressed as he imagined they might have chosen for an endless air of merrymaking. They talked and laughed with one another, sat at endless tables stocked as if in a plentiful dream. Their eyes were bright.

In the tiny vision, Loki is clad in grey and he sits in a barren field with his knees drawn up against his body, a sort of preoccupied sorrow on his face. Thor does not know how he can tell that Loki is utterly alone, except that there is a dullness to everything. A sense of quiet and stillness.

As Thor watches, Loki looks up, and the longing that strikes Thor then is overwhelming.

“Let him return with me,” he begs, because he has never needed anything more.

*

It is not possible, Hela explains.

“He cannot return, because there is nothing for him to return _to_. Even his bones are long since turned to dust.”

Thor wants to protest, but he cannot think of any answer that could overcome that.

“There must be some way,” Thor replies anyway, caught on the edge between anger and despair. He has journeyed all the way to Helheim, and he will not have it be for nothing. “Please…”

Hela regards him with a tilt of her head. “He cannot return now.”

The calm refusal stops him cold. At least that is what he believes it is at first, but she is watching him carefully. He keeps quiet for a moment, repeating her words to himself; his years with his brother taught him such care.

“If not _now_ ,” he asks, “then when?”

She tells him.

She explains that she could turn Loki’s spirit away when he first arrived at her gates, so many years ago. He would waken on the ashen rock of Svartalfheim, and he would not know how he had survived.

Thor feels he cannot breathe.

“But it is a choice that cannot be unmade, if you choose it,” Hela adds. “He will not remember any of this, and you won’t remember any more than he will. Neither of you will ever know this happened. So you must be sure it is what you want.”

Thor still cannot fill his lungs to answer.

“Are you sure he will still love you as you love him, once the danger is over? Are you sure you will not bring him back only to be sundered from him again, by his hand?”

And Thor does doubt, in that moment. He remembers the chaos of Loki’s final years, and he remembers how Loki’s regret came only when he lay run through with a poisoned blade, his body quaking in its death throes.

Thor stares at the darkness between Hela’s hands, where the image of his brother so briefly lingered.

If he does this, he will be giving up the life that is waiting for him in Asgard: Sif and the children that they would have. His cousins and his friends. A life of protecting and nurturing the eternal realm, ensuring its peace and plenty. He will be giving it up not just for himself but for everyone.

And he cannot know for certain what he will be giving it up _for_. He cannot know the path the realms will take. He cannot be sure that Loki’s rage and bitterness will not return, that he will not betray Thor again.

Hela’s shadowed eyes gaze at him as he thinks on her words and tries to make up his mind.

“Are you sure your memory has not made more of him than he truly was?”

The question is a blow, but perhaps not the sort she believes it is. Because nothing could be further from the truth, and he sees it only then.

Thor thinks of all the years that have passed since his brother died and he sees for the first time their emptiness. He had not known he drifted through each day like a sleepwalker, numb inside, moving forward only because he had no choice. He remembers all that time now as but a blur.

His heart wrenches painfully in his chest. Fear still plagues him, but he knows what he wants.

“May I speak to him?” he asks. “I know we will not remember, but still…”

Hela shakes her head. Somehow Thor knew that would be her answer.

Thor takes a deep breath, then. He shuts his eyes and makes the only choice he can make.

He is risking everything again, but this time it is not on hope. Not truly.

*

The realm of Hel is vast, and Loki has made his way across much of it in the intervening years. At first he sought out the borders, believing that the dead realm had never before seen a creature as clever as he. But when he reached them, he found not a single breach, not a single weak point to dig against.

It is not a prison. It is a tomb. And even for him there is no way out.

It has been a long time since he began to accept that. For some immeasurable stretch of time after he understood it, he still wandered along that boundary, prying at every stone, unready to give in. Hoping at least for a glimpse of what lay beyond, if he could not reach it. But even that was too much to ask.

Loki died. And the living realms and everything within them are lost to him.

He finds the strangest thing about being dead is that while he no longer sleeps—he can lie down and shut his eyes but oblivion never overtakes him, rest never comes—still he dreams.

Mostly he dreams of Thor, in waking fantasies that flit across his mind. He knows they are not memories; they are incoherent and aimless, with moments he recognizes thrown together all out of place. But every sense in them is of Thor, and each time when they fade he feels bereft.

He longs for Thor, and he knows he will never see him again.

He spent some time, early on, trying to decide whether he was sure Thor had survived. If Thor were dead, still he would not come here, so that in itself is not proof. But the realms had not fallen to darkness; if Malekith had been victorious, Loki feels certain there would surely be a sudden overpopulation problem in Hel, and there has been no such influx.

So Thor won. And if Thor won, Thor lives.

Loki is glad of that. And perhaps a little proud.

Loki is also jealous. In his darkest moments, the dreams all around him, he fears that Thor has forgotten him.

He remembers Thor holding him close as he bled, he remembers Thor trying to smile, trying to comfort him. He remembers using his last few strained breaths to tell Thor why he’d done it and hoping he understood, hoping that it was enough after everything else he’d done.

And he knows that eventually, after death took him, Thor had let him go. Thor lives on without him. Perhaps he is happy. Perhaps he is better off.

When Loki thinks of that, it stirs up an almost physical ache, a misery so forceful he wonders that he is able to muster it, being dead.

*

Loki is sitting at the edge of an empty field near the borders of Helheim when the ruler of the realm appears before him. He knows who she is, of course. He gets to his feet slowly, unfolding stiff limbs and brushing himself off with dignity. He makes a little bow.

“To what do I owe the—”

She tells him that at that very moment, Thor is just on the other side of the gates of Hel.

If Loki still had a heart to beat, it would in an instant be racing now as he demands, desperate, to see him.

“That was what he believed he wanted when he ventured here. But ultimately that was not his choice,” Hela smiles, dark shadows deep in her eyes. “He is departing again now. He should reach the living realms in a matter of hours, sped along by certain magics.”

If Loki had any of his own power here, he would cut her down, or shatter the wall and force his way beyond. As it is, he only gasps.

Thor had come all this way, and then he had allowed himself to be diverted. He had turned back. Thor had let him go again.

Loki is torn between heartbreak and rage.

Hela, though, is still smiling. She watches him with amusement. She waits until he notices, until he stares at her, groping for words.

“Old trickster,” she says. “You know better than that.”

It takes him a moment to catch on.

There are still tears on his face as joy begins to well up in him, taking hold and weaving through every particle of his being, but he is laughing for relief as everything around him begins to fade.

Thor came after him. Thor found a way.

*

When he wakens, he can almost still feel Thor’s arms around him.

He can certainly still feel the pain. Enough to daze him, it mingles with the sensation of the hard dirt of Svartalfheim beneath him and the chill within him, and he groans as he pushes himself up, his bones feeling somehow older, aching.

He is certain that he truly did die. He remembers that—he remembers sputtering out apologies because he felt death coming for him, inevitable as the ground after a fall. He remembers the blackness embracing him until there was nothing else.

It takes him a moment after that to realize he is alone. That is proof all the more that he was dead. Thor left him here, and he would only have left a corpse behind.

Yet now Loki is alive, and he is not sure why. He died, and some thin thread of the fates led him back. It is fortune so good he cannot possibly deserve it. He sits for a time while his head clears and the pain ebbs, trying to put the pieces together, trying to decide what he is to do.

Clearly, Thor prevailed and the realms are safe. And as far as anyone knows, Loki is dead. All he has to do is walk away and he is free, never to return to the cell that was promised to him.

He makes no move to leave. He can still nearly feel his brother’s arms around him.

When the skiff appears, glinting dully in the realm’s dim light, it is as if that same thread is dangling before Loki’s eyes, bright and tempting, and he is unable to resist grasping it with both hands to see where it takes him.

*

Thor does not remember.

He learns of Loki’s return and of his deception in the same moment, and…

And it is strange. He knows he is hurt by the repeated betrayal. He knows he is furious at what Loki has done. But he feels those things distantly, as if the sentiment belonged to someone else. Or to another life.

He doesn’t remember that he chose this. But thrumming deep within him, like an underground sea, there is gladness. And a feeling that this is right.

Loki is alive.


End file.
